Hidden Billionaires in Plain Sight Emerge As Stocks Rise

By Brendan Coffey and Alexander Cuadros -
Mar 15, 2012

Billionaire Steven Bresky, 58, has
eluded the limelight that usually accompanies great wealth for
five years.

In 2007, Bresky inherited his father’s 74 percent stake in
Seaboard Corp. (SEB), a $5.7 billion commodities trading and cargo
shipping company that generated almost a third of its revenue
last year slaughtering 5 million hogs. Bresky’s stock is worth
$1.7 billion today.

“He must regretfully decline to be interviewed,” said
Bresky’s assistant, Amanda Doyle, from the company’s Merriam,
Kansas, headquarters on March 14. “He just doesn’t do a lot of
stories.”

An analysis of stakes held in publicly traded U.S. and
Latin American companies uncovered Bresky and seven other
billionaires who haven’t appeared in any major international
wealth rankings. Most of their 10-figure fortunes are derived
from public holdings and dividend income.

Bresky, Seaboard’s chairman, has remained under the radar
by owning his shares, which are down 9 percent since he
inherited them, through two Newton, Massachusetts-based holding
companies, Seaboard Flour LLC and SFC Preferred LLC. Seaboard
Corp., which also has sugar and power operations, bought half of
the Butterball turkey brand for $178 million last year from
Garner, North Carolina-based Maxwell Group.

Far From Silicon Valley

American Graham Weston, 48, has also avoided being ranked
with the world’s richest, partly by running a technology company
in San Antonio, Texas -- 1,700 miles from Silicon Valley. Weston
owns about 15 percent of Rackspace Hosting Inc. (RAX), a provider of
Web-based information-technology systems. His stock is worth
almost $1.1 billion.

The company held its initial public offering in August
2008. Rackspace shares have surged more than 12-fold since
hitting a low of $4 per share in February 2009, making Weston,
the company’s largest shareholder, a billionaire.

Weston loathes talking about his wealth. After seeing
glitzy dot-coms fail spectacularly a decade ago he, along with
his Rackspace cohorts, decided to adopt what they call a no-
stars policy.

“We said we wanted to be judged on our substance, not our
flash,” Weston said in a telephone interview on March 14.

Weston has put some of his money -- he’s sold about $60
million of Rackspace stock since 2008 -- into helping
entrepreneurs and local students. Weston and Rackspace employees
have contributed $2 million in grants to spruce up local
schools, fund mentoring programs and provide supplies.

“It’s a way for a corporation to interface in a
philanthropic way, not just with money but with our own
enthusiasm,” Weston said. “We really adopted a new model,
which is the idea that a corporation takes accountability for
the success of the schools around it and gets directly
involved.”

Pleasure Aircraft

Insurance mogul William R. Berkley, 66, built his estimated
$1.2 billion fortune by creating what became W.R. Berkley Corp. (WRB)
The $4.9 billion Greenwich, Connecticut-based company has 48
operating units underwriting a spectrum of property and casualty
risks, from pleasure aircraft to cyber security.

Berkley owns about 18 percent of the company, a stake worth
almost $900 million today. He has also collected more than $51
million in company dividends since 1980, and has collected more
than $85 million in salary and bonuses since 1993. In 2006 and
2007, Berkley earned $58 million selling shares of First
Marblehead Corp., a Boston-based student loan company he has
been a director of since 1995.

“He’s very private about his wealth,” said Karen Horvath,
a spokesman for W.R. Berkley Corp. “He prefers not to be on any
lists.”

Holocaust Survivor

Surging economic growth in Latin America is minting a new
wave of wealthy tycoons. Booming consumer demand in Brazil has
made Samuel Klein, an 88-year-old Polish immigrant and Holocaust
survivor, and his son Michael, billionaires. In 2009, Klein sold
his chain of home-appliance stores, Casas Bahia Comercial Ltda.,
to retail billionaire Abilio Diniz.

The Kleins also have cash. As part of the sale to Diniz,
the family kept Casas Bahia’s property holdings. Diniz pays them
140 million reais ($78 million) a year in rent. Casas Bahia’s
press office said the family was unavailable to comment.

Chemicals and Copper

Billionaire Antonio del Valle, 74, has turned Mexichem SAB
into one of the largest chemical producers in the Americas by
acquiring more than 15 competitors since 2007. The Tlalnepantla,
Mexico-based company’s shares have surged more than 50-times
since 2002, making his family’s 48 percent stake, which he
controls, worth $3.2 billion.

Del Valle got his start in banking. He served as chief
executive of Grupo Financiero Bital SA until his partners sold
it to HSBC Holdings Plc in 2002, paying him in cash and shares
of Mexichem -- then known as Grupo Industrial Camesa.

Mexican regulatory filings indicate the family has been
able to increase its stake in Mexichem by reinvesting most of
their dividends and proceeds from a 2005 stock sale back into
the company.

Del Valle also owns closely held lender Grupo Financiero Ve
Por Mas SAB and Elementia SA, which makes copper and aluminum
products and is part-owned by Carlos Slim, the world’s richest
man according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He controls
all three stakes through his holding company, Grupo Empresarial
Kaluz SA. Del Valle’s personal assistant said he was unavailable
for comment.

Precious Peruvian Metals

Buoyed by surging gold prices, Alberto Benavides and his
family have seen their 28 percent voting stake in Cia. de Minas
Buenaventura SA, Peru’s biggest producer of precious metals,
jump five-fold in a decade to $2.7 billion. Today Benavides, 91,
owns $1.2 billion of the company’s stock after giving the rest
in equal parts to his five children last year.

Based on an analysis of dividends, local taxes and market
performance, the Benavides family probably has an investment
portfolio worth at least $250 million. “We’re people who have
no interest in ostentation or luxury,” Roque Benavides, who has
led the company since his father retired, said in an e-mail.
“We’re working people whose goal is to contribute to the social
development of Peru.”

Banco Santander Purchase

Alvaro Saieh, 62, became a billionaire after his shares of
Corpbanca (CORPBANC), Chile’s sixth-biggest lender, jumped 63 percent in
2009, more than doubling the following year. His 63 percent
stake is now worth more than $2.1 billion.

Saieh, who earned a doctorate at the University of Chicago
and traces his roots to Palestine, formed his company by leading
the takeover of century-old Banco de Concepcion in 1995 and
using it to buy up rivals.

In December, Saieh oversaw the $1.16 billion acquisition of
Banco Santander SA (SAN)’s Colombian unit, helping Corpbanca become
the first Chilean financial institution to own a foreign bank.

A press official representing Saieh, who asked not to be
named due to internal policy, said his closely held retail,
insurance and media assets are worth $2.6 billion not including
debt. SMU SA, his chain of supermarkets and retail stores,
reported 2010 sales of $2.2 billion.

The number of billionaires that remain uncovered is
difficult to quantify. “It’s hard to give you a number. You
should question anyone who claims they can,” said Anthony DeChellis, head of Private Banking Americas for Credit Suisse in
New York. “It is a very difficult thing to know.”